It seems that Disney have decided to get some advice from movie giant Pixar on the Muppets movie, much like earlier this year when Disney went to Pixar for some advice on the new Tron Legacy movie.

Principals involved with Disney’s upcoming live-action pic toplining Jason Segel flew to Pixar headquarters in Emeryville, Calif., on Wednesday for a table read of the project with the animation powerhouse.

The involvement comes just months after Pixar helped shape reshoots for Disney’s upcoming sci-fi tentpole “Tron Legacy.”

In other words, this is the second recent example of the animation house assisting parent Disney with a live-action feature.

Some of the members of the so-called “Pixar Brain Trust” — filmmakers John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Michael Arndt, Bob Peterson and president Ed Catmull — were there for the consultations. Docter is a particularly avid Muppets fan, so he almost certainly was one of the attendees. On the Disney side, Muppets director James Bobin and producers David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman were likely in the room along with Segel. Neither Pixar nor Disney would comment.

Beyond whatever advice might have come down for the project at hand, the fact that Pixar has its fingers in the Muppets pie suggests that Disney, under the new regime of Rich Ross and Sean Bailey, is intent on taking advantage of its subsidiary’s storytelling abilities.

Pixar are obviously a great source of knowledge, let us not forget that Pixar have yet to have a flop, and all of their movies have had mega returns at the box office. Of course Pixar is now a subsidiary of Disney, so they’re keeping it in the family. Hopefully this will make the Muppet’s movie even more awesome than it already is shaping up to be!

Read the full article at hollywoodreporter.com.

According to Deadline.Com the is already a second Despicable Me film in the works.

Despicable Me is the first Universal film in a while where the studio doesn’t have to defend the costs and first dollar gross outlays. The film was made for $69 million with little or no gross out the door. It is a fresh IP with a sequel already in the works: Despicable Me 2 talks are already underway among the studio, Meledandri, and writers Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio.

There’s no word on any stars that are returning at this point or even if the film gets off the ground, but with $57 Million in its first weekend the film is already well on the way to making back its budget, lets not forget international box offices as well as DVD sales, the film could be looking at well over $100 Million and easily make back double its budget. We’ll keep you all updated.

Better late than not at all. I’ve added images of Jason from the MTV Movie Awards. Jason along with Despicable Me Co-Star Miranda Cosgrove appeared at the awards show to introduce Katy Perry who performed her summer smash hit California Girls.

• Red Carpet Photos
• On Stage Photos
• Award Show Captures

The Muppet movie that Jason Segel & Nicholas Stoller have been working on for years has finally got a release date. The movie, which is tentatively titled The Greatest Muppet Movie Ever Made, will be released Christmas Day 2011 across theatres in the USA.

The movie will go up against the big screen live action adaption of Tintin, the Steven Spielberg-directed “Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn” and also “We Bought a Zoo,” helmed by Cameron Crowe, both of which will debut December 23rd.

The film has also had a slight modification in its title as well, but, its had so many names its hard to keep track and I assume it will change again before it’s released.

Jason was on hand last night to present an award for the Spike TV Guys Choice Awards 2010. Jason presented the award for Unstoppable Jock, which faced Drew Brees against Lebron James.

The show which was pre-taped, airs June 20th 2010 at 9pm on Spike TV. You can view a blog of the results from the show here.

Nicholas Stoller has been promoting Get Him To The Greek recently and had a string of interviews where he’s talked about a lot of his upcoming projects, a lot of which involve Jason.

Stoller talked about Gullivers Travels and said that he’s seen a rough cut but it already looks great.

Stoller’s especially confident in the film’s director in terms of making sure it will be a good movie. “The world’s going to see when ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ comes out, Rob is a very talented director. I just saw a rough cut of it without any VFX so it’s just Jack Black’s head or Jason Segel against green screen, and it’s just a really charming, hilarious true fantasy adventure movie.”

The Muppets script is almost complete, he mentioned that they’ve had the first table read with all the actual puppeteers who gave them advice on the characers.

For a while, it seemed like that project might not get off the ground. Then the new Disney leadership came in and made it a priority and all of a sudden it’s going. Can you talk a little bit about the behind-the-scenes? Were you nervous it might not actually go?

Stoller: I was pretty nervous because we’d worked on it for two years at that point. Maybe I’m just not that humble but our script is awesome. Like Jason is so into the Muppets and such a fan. I’m such a fan of Muppets. And I think the script’s actually pretty solid. It really is a labour of love for us to get this thing off the ground. It was scary but then there was the change in leadership and I think that the new guy in charge is basically like, “We should just do this.” It won’t be that expensive, the script is fun, the guys just love this thing, and with all of that, the world is just ready for the Muppets again. It’s strange that there hasn’t been one for so long. I think there were a lot of political reasons for why that was the case but it’s just exciting that now it’s going to happen.

Jason will have a crazy schedule in September because he will be filming both How I Met Your Mother and The Greatest Muppet Movie of All Time simultaneously.

So it’s filming this September. How long is the film shoot on that? Is it filming here in L.A?
Stoller: It’s all in L.A. There might be some location shooting as well. I think it’s pretty short. I heard it was like six to eight weeks, which is pretty short. But you don’t have to do makeup or anything. There’s no hair, there’s no makeup, there’s like one trailer for Jason and one for the actors who do cameos. It’s quick. So that’s what they’re saying. I don’t know if that will change.

Totally. So Jason is set to star. What about his TV show [How I Met Your Mother]?
Stoller: He’s basically not going to sleep while they’re shooting. He’s going to arrange his TV show in such a way that—I think his show shoots 3-4 days a week—and he’ll shoot the rest of the week and weekends.

I see. So this is really the passion project.
Stoller: Oh yeah, yeah. It’s going to be intense for him but he’s thriller. I’m really excited for him. I don’t know if I said this to you, but I consider the Muppets to be a comedy gateway-drug. It’s like the first thing you see when you’re a kid and you’re like, “Oh my God. This is what I have to do for the rest of my life. So just to be a part of that, and I have a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and she’s going to see this and it’s really just very exciting.

Finally he talked about Five Year Engagement which has been talked about for a couple of years, but never seemed to be getting off the ground.

According to the always-accurate IMDb [sarcasm]: Five-Year Engagement, Einstein Theory, Opposite Day—are these on the drawing board or are these just projects that have been linked to you for a while?
Stoller: Opposite Day was a while ago and I have not worked on that in a long time. And Five-Year Engagement is something I’m considering to be the next thing to direct. I’m trying to figure that out right now. And then the Einstein Theory is something I’m producing along with the Mark Gordon Company at Warner Bros. and we’ve been working on a script for a while.

Check out the full interviews here and here.

Judd Apatow is to be awarded with the Jack Benny Award from The University of California June 1st at UCLA’s Royce Hall. At the same event there will be a Question and Answer session with Jason Segel.

Judd Apatow will receive the Jack Benny Award, the University of California, Los Angeles announced on Wednesday.

The “Knocked Up” director is being honored for his comedy work. Previous recipients include Johnny Carson, Steve Martin, Conan O’Brien, Adam Sandler and Bill Murray.

Regarding the award, Judd Apatow replied, “I am honored to receive this award from UCLA even though I am a former USC student. I am torn, but since I never graduated from USC, I shall accept it.”

The most recent recipient was Kevin Smith, who was honored in 2006.

Apatow will get his statue at a ceremony held on June 1 at UCLA’s Royce Hall. The event will also feature a question and answer session with Jason Segel, who has collaborated with Apatow on the television show “Freaks and Geeks” and the 2008 feature film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

Source.

We can also announce a new group of high-profile presenters for this year’s show. The cast of the upcoming comedy “Grown Ups” — Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Kevin James, Rob Schneider and David Spade — as well as Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Anna Kendrick, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Aubrey Plaza will all be on-hand to dole out Golden Popcorns to winners.

These folks join previously revealed presenters Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Zac Efron, Jonah Hill, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Steve Carell, Miranda Cosgrove, Shaun White, Vanessa Hudgens, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Russell Brand.

Hosted by Aziz Ansari, the 2010 Movie Awards air live on Sunday, June 6, at 9 p.m. ET. Voting is currently under way at MovieAwards.MTV.com, where fans can choose their favorite films and actors in categories like Best Kiss, Best Villain and Best Scared-As-S**t Performance. “The Hangover” is leading the pack with six nominations, followed by five for both “New Moon” and “Avatar.”

Don’t miss the MTV Movie Awards, airing Sunday, June 6 at 9 p.m. ET on MTV!

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

Be sure to check out the awards show June 6th!

There’s some major spoilers coming out regarding the last few episodes of the season for How I Met Your Mother. As we have previously mentioned, the show wrapped filming last week, so now there’s full on hype for the finale of the season. Korbi from Zap2it.com has some major spoilers after visiting the set of the show regarding the last few episodes. Check it out below.

Show Spoilers »

Read the full article here. Also in the comments of the article, Korbi has promised video interviews with Jason and Alyson, so be sure to keep visiting Korbi’s blog for that!

How I Met Your Mother wrapped filming season five yesterday but don’t think that means he’s going to be slacking off for the summer, Jason is going to be a busy guy in the coming months!

• Currently he’s in the middle of filming Bad Teacher which went into production last month.
• The Adventurer’s Handbook written by Jonah Hill based on Mick Conefrey’s book of the same name, has just gone into production. So expect Jason to start filming that soon. The film has a 2010 release date, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it pushed back to 2011.
• Though I’m not 100% sure, I think that Jeff Who Lives At Home will also be going into production soon. The movie will be filmed in Louisiana.
• Despicable Me is released July 9th.